Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Goldberg, Lee (best large ebook reader .txt) 📗

few yards away there was a chaise longue with a white blanket laid out on top of the thick cushion. I could see the spine of a John Grisham hardcover, a glass of water, and a big, floppy sun hat on the coffee table beside the chaise.

A uniformed police officer observed everything from the shade of a patio umbrella, sweat dampening his short-sleeved shirt.

“’Ey! No make li’dat, bruddah.” Someone spoke sharply behind us.

We looked up to see a big Hawaiian guy in his thirties standing in the path, hands on his hips right above the gun and the badge clipped to his belt. He was in shorts, flip-flops, and an aloha shirt that depicted a vintage seaplane landing on a tropical isle. There were laugh lines around his eyes and his chubby cheeks made me think he found more joy in life than sorrow. But he wasn’t looking very happy at that moment. He was looking downright mean.

“Are you the detective in charge of this investigation?” Monk asked, rising to his feet.

“Ass right, brah. LT Ben Kealoha, Kauai police. Why boddah you?”

“I have no idea what you just said. I’m an American from America. I’m Adrian Monk and this is my assistant, Natalie Teeger.”

“Fo’ what you mek ass doing look-see in da puka?”

Monk turned to me. “I think we’re going to need a translator.”

I understood the detective. He was speaking in thick pidgin, which is not so different from California surfer-speak. I’m not a surfer, but I grew up in Monterey and dated quite a few of them. They spoke pidgin because their Hawaiian surfing idols did.

“This is Lt. Ben Kealoha. He wants to know what we’re doing peeking through the bushes.” I turned to Kealoha and gave him my friendliest smile. “Mr. Monk is a detective consultant to the San Francisco police. He was just indulging in a little professional curiosity. Would you mind telling us what happened?”

“Ka den. Da makule haole in da pool. Da coconut dun drop and wen brok da noggin of da momona wahine. She wen sink in da pool li’ that,” he said. “Dass why hard. Bummah.”

I’d never heard pidgin spoken so fast before, and it didn’t help me any that he was mixing in some Hawaiian words, but I still got the gist of it. I turned to Monk.

“He says it’s an accident. The old woman was sitting in the hot tub, a coconut from the palm tree dropped on her head, knocked her out, and she drowned.” I turned back to Kealoha. “Yikes. Talk about bad luck. I won’t be sitting under any palm trees on this trip. We’ll be on our way now, if that’s okay with you. Mahalo.”

I started to go, but Monk didn’t move. He just shook his head. “That’s not what happened.”

All the joy I felt about spending a week in Hawaii evaporated in that instant—because I knew what Monk was going to say next and what it meant for me. I silently mouthed the words as he spoke them.

“This woman was murdered,” Monk said.

“Show me how you figga that, yeah?” Kealoha said, motioning us to follow him.

Monk went along eagerly, a smile on his face. He couldn’t have been happier to stumble onto a corpse on the first day of his Hawaiian vacation. I looked at it differently. I saw it as evidence that I was cursed.

Mr. Monk and the Coconut

Kealoha opened the gate and led us into the side yard, his flip-flops slapping against his heels. We passed twin air conditioners and a row of trash cans that reeked of spoiled food. We walked around a palm tree, stepped over some fallen coconuts, and came into the backyard behind the chaise longue.

I got my first good look at the kind of accommodations $5000 a night will get you. The bungalow’s spacious living room and gourmet kitchen were entirely open to the patio, thanks to interlocking panels of sliding glass that disappeared into pocket walls. High-end rattan furniture was arranged throughout the interior of the house and the patio, making it all one continuous open space.

Monk glanced back the way we’d come in, leaned over to one side and then the other, then went over to the chaise longue. He glanced at the hardcover book on the table, the sun hat, and then went over to the body.

He squatted beside the woman, sniffed her, and examined the flesh-colored hearing aids in each of her ears.

Monk extended his hands, framing the scene like a director, zeroing in on the coconut before his attention was distracted by three decorative lava rocks in the planting area, which he carefully rearranged according to their size, from biggest to smallest.

Kealoha watched Monk with amusement. So did the two coroners and the uniformed officer.

“He for real?” Kealoha asked me.

I nodded. “It’s his process.”

Satisfied with his rocks, Monk turned to Kealoha.

“She’s been dead two hours, judging by her skin and lividity, though it’s hard to tell since she’s been in the hot water and blazing sun. What’s her name?”

“Helen Gruber,” Kealoha said.

“How long have she and her husband been staying here?”

I almost asked Monk how he knew she was married, but then I spotted the diamond wedding ring on her finger. I don’t know how I missed it before. The diamond was the size of a marble.

Kealoha shrugged. “Mebbe a week.”

“A week?” Monk rolled his head, closed one eye, and held his hand out over the hot tub, palm up. “Where is her husband?”

Kealoha shrugged. “We’re lookin’.”

Monk frowned, stood up, and came over to us.

“She was hit on the head with a coconut and drowned,” Monk said.

“Das what I say,” Kealoha said.

“But it wasn’t an accident,” Monk said. “This entire scene was staged for your benefit. She wasn’t even in the hot tub when she was killed.”

Monk tipped his head toward the palm tree in the side yard. “The coconut came from that tree, not the one over by the hot tub. You can see the indentation in the dirt where the coconut